Mothers and Sons by Colm Tóibín Page A

on them she saw Betty Farrell passing the window, gazing in her direction for a second and then walking away quickly. She recognized several others who paused at the window, but no one greeted her or came into the shop.
    As soon as the fish and chips were ready and packaged the men made for the van and the car. She shook their hands and thanked them.
    ‘Oh, it’s a hug for me,’ the boss said. He gave her a kiss on the cheek.
    Nancy and Gerard and the girls waved at them as they set off for Dublin.
    ‘You have that look on your face again,’ Gerard said to her.
    ‘What look?’
    ‘You look like you’re going to be arrested.’
    T HE FOLLOWING Wednesday the planning officer came and on Thursday she had a visit from the health officer. Both, she thought, behaved like greyhounds sniffing. Neither of them looked at her directly; as they spoke to her they peered at the ceiling, or the floor. The planning officertold her that she would have to close. There had been complaints, he said, but even if there hadn’t been complaints, she had no permission to open a chip shop in the square. She could of course apply for permission but it would take time. In the meantime, she would have to cease trading. The health officer looked down into the freezer for a long time and smelled the oil and went on his way without saying anything.
    Two days later, she received a letter from the health officer pointing out the breaches of the health regulations. That same morning, she opened a letter from the bank’s solicitors initiating legal proceedings against her.
    That evening she drove around the corner to the Irish Street, afraid that if she walked she would meet someone who would ask her about the chip shop, or complain about the litter. She knocked on Ned Doyle’s door and, when his wife answered, she inspected Nancy slowly and cautiously.
    ‘I don’t know if he’s here,’ she said. ‘I’ll check. I think he went out.’
    Nancy stared at her, stony-faced.
    ‘I’ll go and check,’ she said.
    Ned Doyle came out into the hallway in his stockinged feet, his shirt open a few buttons at the chest, his hair ruffled and an Evening Press in his hand.
    ‘Oh, Nancy, you’ve caught me at a bad time now,’ he said. ‘But come in.’
    He opened the door into a small carpeted front room whose table and sideboard were covered with boxes and papers.
    ‘I won’t keep you long, Ned,’ she said.
    Sweeping papers and brochures from an armchair, he motioned her to sit down. She wondered for a moment what to do, knowing that she would be able to explain to him better what she wanted while standing. Nonetheless, she sat down and he sat across the table from her on a hard chair.
    ‘So you know why I’m here, Ned?’
    ‘I do, Nancy. There’s no point in saying I don’t. There are a lot of complaints from the merchants in the Monument Square about noise and litter. And of course the regulations, there are all the regulations.’
    She wished she were standing so she might be able to keep her eye fixed on him more keenly. She felt that she had no dignity sitting opposite him like this. All she could do was leave silence.
    ‘I think it was ill advised, Nancy, opening the chip shop.’
    She said nothing, but listened to the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. On the wall opposite there was a photograph of Ned shaking hands with de Valera.
    ‘I would have thought,’ he said, ‘that George had left you comfortably off.’
    ‘Is that right, Ned?’
    ‘And you know a shop like that,’ he looked worried for a moment and hesitated before he continued, ‘a shop like that, selling chips after the pubs close, I’ll put it to you this way, it wouldn’t have been the sort of thing you’d associate with the Sheridans.’
    ‘I’m not one of the Sheridans, Ned.’
    ‘I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with that, Nancy.’
    ‘I know that, Ned,’ she said, holding his gaze.
    Again, there was silence between them, but she knew she